Online retail giant Amazon has pocketed 40% of the additional money spent by consumers online during the pandemic, MPs have heard.
Calling on the Government to provide “firm commitments” to support small businesses against the rising popularity of e-commerce sites, shadow business minister Chi Onwurah warned many high street shops are “afraid they won’t make it through the winter”.
Amazon is among the world’s richest corporations, with its owner Jeff Bezos worth 113 billion dollars (£84 billion), making him the richest person in the world.
Business minister Nadhim Zahawi said the Government is spending £300 million to “support technology adoption into manufacturing” to assist smaller companies.
Speaking during business departmental questions in the Commons, Ms Onwurah told MPs: “Of the £5 billion of new online spend because of the pandemic, 40% has gone to one website – Amazon.
“Many small businesses are afraid they won’t make it through the winter because of the lack of Government support and they have Brexit, climate and technological change to deal with too.
“So I want to ask the minister, what is the plan for small businesses to survive Covid and build back smarter and greener?”
Ms Onwurah urged the Government to provide “not vague promises, but firm commitments” to help small businesses.
Mr Zahawi replied: “I think (Ms Onwurah), as a fellow engineer, will know that the Made Smarter initiative has been a tremendous pilot in the North West and we recently announced a further expansion with £300 million – £147 million coming from Government and the balance coming from the private sector – to support technology adoption into manufacturing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here